Derek Mahon Flashcards
Imagery, exploring people and places
Grandfather
Image of a four year old.
“Discreetly up to no good or banging around the house like a four year old”
This image suggests that the old man is like a mischievous child. The old man is harmless, living in his own world.
“As cute as they come” also creates a childlike quality in the old man.
As it should be
In this poem, Mahon explores political violence.
He gets inside the mind of someone who believes that someone should be killed for the good of the community.
It’s set in the troubles.
“We hunted the mad bastard” and they “gunned him down In a blind yard between ten sleeping Lorries”
The speaker claims that the children sleep easier now that the victim is gone
The word “hunted” implies the speaker enjoys killing his victims like a sport.
After the titanic
Gives voice to Bruce ismay.
Chairman of the White Star Line, owners of the Titanic.
“I turned to ice to hear my costly life go thundering down”
“Now I hide in a lonely house behind the sea.”
He explores Ismays depression.
His reputation sank like the Titanic.
Ismay tell the reader that he dulls his anguish by taking Cocaine
His gardener see him “take his morphine and see no one”
Antarctica
Poem is in the eyes of Captain Robert Oates as he is going out to his certain death.
“I am going out and may be some time”
He goes out into the “howling snow”
His “frostbite is replaced by vertigo”
The howling wind could express his inner turmoil while he knows he is dying
Kinsale
The place of kinsale represents his seasonal depression.
The “dark rain” is a “thing of the past”but today “sky blue slates are steaming in the sun”
Then he mapentions a “future forbidden to no one”
Past, present and future.
It may suggest that this poem also reflects the hope for a brighter future for Ireland, freed from the burden of its violent History
